


I Hate That I'm You

by C1ashi1dr



Series: Thirteen Fanzine Prompt Week [5]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Doubles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Kinda, Mental Anguish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24554086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C1ashi1dr/pseuds/C1ashi1dr
Summary: "You're very quick," a smooth voice says from behind her. The Doctor whirls about, startled to see herself staring back at her. The coat, the shirt, everything is the same down to a T. It's terrifying and she sits up, scrambling back away from her double. "Come now, Doctor, you know there's nothing to fear.""Who are you?" the Doctor asks the Double, eyes raking over her form. She's an exact replica. "And where is this? Where am I?"
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Series: Thirteen Fanzine Prompt Week [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770349
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	I Hate That I'm You

**Author's Note:**

> in a complete reversal of my usual form, this was created very early in the morning (i got up some-odd three hours earlier so i could get this written and posted before i had to go do things today) and so i have no idea what the quality is like. like all previous works in this series, this guy is unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine. (also the whole thing with the flower is not canon, it's something just made up because i needed a plot device) 
> 
> this is for [@thirteenfanzine's](https://thirteenfanzine.tumblr.com/) prompt week, with the fifth prompt of "Inner Demons". hold on for an angsty roller coaster everyone.

“Doctor?” Yaz’s frantic voice is the first thing she registers, though it quickly becomes drowned out in the cacophony of her frantic heart beat. Her eyes feel sealed shut, her mind slow, body heavy. Something is wrong, something is very wrong but she’s not quite sure what it is, not yet. 

“Calm down, Yaz.” Ryan’s voice is the next thing she can hear, an indeterminable amount of time from when she’d first heard Yaz’s. “Her hearts are still beating, so she’s still alive.”

This time, the Doctor strains her mind to try and keep listening, to know what her companions are saying. They sound scared, worried, and the Doctor has to wonder what it is that’s made them like that. It’s probably, this, the fact that she can’t move, can’t open her eyes, can’t reassure them that everything is alright.

Her mind struggles to cast back to how she even ended up like this. The last thing she can remember is returning to the TARDIS after a long adventure in an alien jungle. There were so many creatures that she’d wanted to show the Fam that they’d stayed overnight, backpacking in and backpacking out. There had been grumbling initially from the crew, but they'd all smiled and gone along with it. The thought warms the Doctor's heart. 

But her memories don't return to her, not quickly at any rate, and the only thing she can drudge up, however fuzzy, is a sweeping heat rushing through her body. The thought makes her shudder internally and she tried to bring more things to the forefront. 

The Doctor was standing at the console, she remembers it. Clear as day, returning to the TARDIS and perching at the console, glancing back at the Fam with a smile splitting her cheeks. It's what she always does when they finish an adventure. But this time was different. Transported back into the memory momentarily, she recalls watching Yaz drop her backpack on the TARDIS floor, shrugging off her coat along with it. She remembers feeling a bit lightheaded, a rush of blood going to her head. There was a pause, a moment allowing her to breathe before she collapsed. Then there's nothing. There's nothing to grasp onto and she can't quite reconcile everything. 

Now she's unable to move. She's trapped in her own body and she can only assume she's on the floor near the console. Maybe she hit her head on the metal? Her head doesn't hurt, and Yaz sounds more worried than she usually is when the Doctor is a klutz. No, something is wrong and she can't figure it out.

She wants to shout out, to say that she’s okay. She wants to open her eyes and look at her Fam and smile and tell them that everything’s alright, she just needs a bit of a nap. But her body betrays her, and she can’t open her eyes. The Doctor is slipping, slipping away into a realm that isn’t her own. She can feel her grip loosening, no matter how much she wants to stay. 

There's a moment of calm and then she blacks out once more.

\-------

The Doctor's eyes flutter open. She's laying in a field, staring up at a burnt orange sky. Her stomach rolls and she glances down, sees silver grass between her fingers. She's home. There's no scent of smoke in the air and the Citadel stands before her, glowing and majestic in the sun. Even here she can tell that this isn't real. The air doesn't quite smell right, the winds feel a little too brisk, the suns a bit too bright.

"You're very quick," a smooth voice says from behind her. The Doctor whirls about, startled to see herself staring back at her. The coat, the shirt, everything is the same down to a T. It's terrifying and she sits up, scrambling back away from her double. "Come now, Doctor, you know there's nothing to fear."

"Who are you?" the Doctor asks the Double, eyes raking over her form. She's an exact replica. "And where is this? Where am I?"

"You know where you are, Doctor. Surely you can't be that dense." The Double sits across from her. She's smirking, infuriatingly so and it's hard to stare at her own face. The Doctor looks away and the Double chuckles. "It seems I underestimated you. Where were you, Doctor? Just now. When you were off with your Fam." the Double chews the word with no lack of hostility. The Doctor feels herself bristle but she stumbles out an answer, still slightly flabbergasted by this situation.

"I don't-" she stops herself, thinks. "Phion," she answers. "Before the colonies got there. Why?"

"You went into the jungle," The Double continues for her, and the Doctor nods. How did the Double know this? "To see the wildlife, like you are so often wanting to do-"

"Who are you?" the Doctor interrupts, her hearts beating a bit faster. The Double doesn't answer. "Who are you?"

"The Tacia flower, Doctor," the Double says. "Surely the Academy told you what happens when you encounter them."

"Of course but there weren't-" the Doctor cuts herself off. The Tacia flower, an infamous flower in Time Lord society. Not really a flower, more of a fungus that looks like one. It releases a spore that was rumored to make Time Lords go mad. It even had the power to force regeneration. "There were?"

"You're so slow this time around," the Double says, shaking her head. "Does that explain who I am?"

"No," the Doctor says. "It really doesn't. Nor does it explain why I'm here. Why Gallifrey, why do you look like me, why-"

"Take a look around Doctor. You noted it yourself, this isn't Gallifrey. Things are just a bit off." She pouts a bit, tilting her head to the side. It's terrifying how like the Doctor she is. "It's as if..." She trails off. She's giving the Doctor a chance, leading her to the answer.

"It's a memory," the Doctor breathes after a moment. "This is my head, isn't it?"

"Finally," the Double says, and she's getting to her feet. "Took you long enough Doctor. I'm surprised you didn’t understand from the moment you woke up. But I suppose I can’t always hope that you’re going to think on your feet.”

“But that doesn’t explain who you are,” the Doctor says. She follows suit, gets up, approaches the Double. “You look exactly like me, you must be a manifestation of something in my brain, but what? What are you? And why are you in my head?” She turns away from the Double. She can’t meet her own eyes, she’s never been able to do that in the mirror. Her hands rake through her hair, breathing out heavily. Her mind is racing, moving through different thoughts, different reasonings for who this person is. What she means to the Doctor. Why she’s there now and she’s never been there before. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Really Doctor, I’m hurt you don’t recognize me,” the Double says. The Doctor can hear the grin in her voice, sickly sweet but sinister all at once. It sends a familiar tingle down her spine. “Turn around and face me, Doctor.”

“You knew what I thought about this place,” the Doctor murmurs, not turning around. She can’t obey orders on the best of days and she’s thinking. She’s being extremely clever, she’s figuring this all out. “I never said anything out loud but you knew. And you know all these things, like you know how to press all my buttons. It’s almost as if-” She pauses, realization dawns like the sunrise before battle and she turns around. She stares at the Double. “You’re me. Properly me. Not just a replica you-”

“I can see inside you, Doctor,” the Double says. Should she even be calling her the Double? She is the Doctor. It’s probably easier if she just keeps referring to her as that. “I know what you think, what you feel. I know everything that happens in that brain of yours, even if I don't want to, the good deeds, the bad deeds, and every horrid thought that crosses your mind." She grimaces then, face curling. 

"But why are you here?" the Doctor asks. She can't figure it out, what's the point? "Why are you here and why can't I go back?"

"I'm here because you have some things you need to take ownership of," the Double replies. "And because you might be at the end of the line."

"Not now," the Doctor says. "I can't be, I've just gotten started in this body! There's so much of the universe for these eyes to see and-"

"Spare me your grandiose speeches," the Double spits. "I'm not here to listen to you babble." She smirks, glances around at their surroundings. "Why don't we start here? Gallifrey. After all that effort that you went to, all the trouble you put into making sure it didn't fall to the Time War. And yet you let the Master burn it."

"I didn't let him do anything," the Doctor says, clenching her hands into fists. "He got here before I could stop it."

"Come now, Doctor, we both know that's a lie. You just didn't want to come back here. All those things that you've done, pulling Clara out of her death before the moment it happened, all those paradoxes, you didn't want to come home because you didn't want to face the consequences of your actions. Maybe if you'd been here they wouldn't have burned."

"Who are you to say the Master wouldn't have burned them if I was here? You don't know what could have happened!" The Doctor wants to reach out, to physically strike this manifestation of her wrong-doings. Maybe then she could have peace. The Double chuckles and the Doctor clenches her hands into fists, blunt nails digging into her palms. The dull pain keeps her grounded. 

"What about your Fam, Doctor?" the Double continues. She pushes forward as though the Doctor isn't getting torn inside out by this conversation. "We both know the way you've been treating them has been unacceptable. Clearly they want to help you but you keep pushing them away."

"I always push them away," the Doctor says. "They can't get too close, they can't get hurt. You know what happens when they get too close. If you really are me, you must know that letting them get close is out of the question."

"You're hurting them," the Double states plainly. She steps into the Doctor's space, forces her to meet her gaze. "You're causing them so much harm, so much anguish. Don't you know how much they want to help you? How could you ever think that what you're doing is good for them?" 

The Doctor doesn't respond. She can't. There's nothing to say to the accusation, so she just stares into her own eyes and feels her soul crumble with every second. If this is the end, why couldn't it have been a familiar face? A kind face? One that she knew, that she could stand to stare at and have her problems bared. Why did it have to be her face?

"You've always been so selfish, Doctor," the Double says, reaching up. She touches the Doctor's cheek, fingers ever soft. "And you've done so many horrible things. How many lives have you taken in front of them, Doctor? How many peoples have you doomed without bothering to look back? How many tragedies could have been prevented if you hadn't been there. If you didn't exist?"

"I don't-"

"You don't know," the Double says. "But I do. Let me show you." Her fingers brush the Doctor's temple and she's pulled back into her mind, sucked from the fields of Gallifrey as if she'd never been there. It's painful, like a tug to her brain, pulling her back into its depths.

These are not memories. She can tell that immediately, everything's all wonk to be memories, more than it should be. She's standing inside the Citadel as it burns, the screams of the people below ringing in her ears as she's pulled back to another planet, a resort that she'd been to with the Fam after Graham had complained of wanting to relax. There had been a problem with a virus that she'd solved, but now the Doctor could see people on stretches being carried out. She recognizes a few of them, feels sick to her stomach before the image shifts again.

Over and over it goes. She watches the decline of Earth, Prem's death, so many people dying at the hands of things she'd tried to prevent. It stretches past this body. Bill, Clara, Amy and Rory, familiar faces branded into her mind that will never leave no matter how much she may want them to. She sees people die, Gallifrey burning over and over again, by her hand, by the Master's hands, by anyone else. There's a sick feeling rolling through her constantly, hearts beating so quickly that she can't keep track of them anymore. The voice of her Double breaks through the haze occasionally, when she tries to look away, when she tries to keep her eyes shut. It's horrific, watching all of this, and then, at what the Doctor can only presume is the end, there is the Master.

She lunges for him, a lurching movement. She doesn't care of this is her mind, if this is just another manifestation, she can't stand to see him standing there, smirking at her like he'd done something right for once. Before she can reach, him, however, there's a violent lurch in her stomach, a sharp tug deep in the base of it.

Her eyes snap open and she shoots forward. A hand on her shoulder attempts to wrestle her back down, but she's focused on her breathing, trying to steady her frantic hearts. She's covered in sweat, her whole body aches, though her head is the worst. It's pounding violently and she can distantly feel moisture on her cheeks. 

"Doctor?" It's Graham, at her side. Pushing on her shoulder. Trying to get her to lay back down. She looks up at him through blurry vision and swipes a hand over her eyes. Tears. She's crying. Faintly, she can feel her hand trembling and she can see the concern in Graham's face. But she's alive. And she's here, the Fam is here, and her Double's voice is gone. She reaches up, grips Graham's hand on her shoulder tightly before he envelops her in a hug. 

She melts into it with a sigh like letting go, hands coming up to grip at his jacket tightly.

"Hugs from Graham," she mutters into his shoulder. "Ten outta ten."

**Author's Note:**

> i would apologize but i'm not sorry. if you want, come check me out [@joanwolfe](https://joanwolfe.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, i take prompts and am generally feral on there. i usually announce new projects there ahead of time along with updates about fics. anyway, with shameless self-promotion out of the way, i also want to say to check out some of the stuff on [@thirteenfanzine's](https://thirteenfanzine.tumblr.com/) blog. they've got a ton of cool content for this prompt week and, y'know, also that fanzine which is pretty awesome.
> 
> as always, try to stay safe and sane
> 
> ~~jo


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